Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a sheet feeding apparatus applicable to an image forming apparatus such as a printer and to an image forming apparatus including the same.
Description of the Related Art
Hitherto, there is known a sheet feeding apparatus comprising a first storage portion in which a sheet is stacked, a feed roller feeding the sheet from the first storage portion, a second storage portion arrayed horizontally with the first storage portion, and a sheet bundle shifting plate shifting sheets within the second storage portion collectively to the first storage portion as disclosed in Japanese Patent No. 3411135 for example. The sheet feeding apparatus also includes a shift home sensor. A state of the shift home sensor is determined when a sheet feed cassette is set after turning the power ON. The shift home sensor is turned ON when a back fence (sheet shift portion) is located at a home position and is turned OFF when the back fence is not located at the home position. Then, in a case when the sheet feed cassette is drawn out of an apparatus body while shifting the sheets during which the sensor is turned OFF, the back fence is moved when the sheet feed cassette is set again to continue the operation of shifting the sheet bundle from the second storage portion to the first storage portion.
However, in a case when the sheet feed cassette is erroneously drawn out of the apparatus body while shifting the sheets, there is a possibility of causing the following problem in resetting the sheet feed cassette by noticing that the sheet is left in the first storage portion in the sheet feeding apparatus described above. That is, it is conceivable to erroneously end up setting a sheet bundle to a back side of the back fence (on the second storage portion side of the back fence) stopping on the first storage portion side in setting the sheet bundle to the sheet feed cassette drawn out of the apparatus body. In this case, the back fence cannot return to its home position on the second storage portion side because the sheet bundle stacked on the back of the back fence obstructs. Thereby, such problems that the apparatus body stops to operate and an alarm is indicated occur, and recovery is not made until when an user removes the sheet bundle erroneously stacked as described above, thus inviting a cumbersome resetting work.